You’re jetlagged, overwhelmed, and unsure of the last time you heard a song at the grocery store that didn’t feature jingling bells. You can’t recall if tonight’s event calls for a white elephant gift or a white-knuckled conversation with your most politically baffling cousin, but either way, you’re already anxious.
Despite what countless Hallmark films have tried to convince us of over the years, many people don’t experience holidays the way that the movies portray them. The holiday season’s unique stew of logistical gymnastics, financial strain, and forced family togetherness can bring about dread for anyone. And for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), this time of year can include additional stressors.
By being aware of the ways that OCD can show up uninvited to your festivities, you can take steps to manage symptoms and experience the holidays on your own terms. Below are five everyday life activities that OCD can exacerbate during the holidays, as well as strategies to cope.
1. Hosting
If you’re hosting holiday festivities, then you likely have enough to take care of without OCD adding extra tasks to your to-do list—but it’s common for intrusive thoughts and compulsions to flare in response to the responsibility of hosting.
Contamination OCD, which causes an intense fear of germs, illness, or becoming “contaminated” by certain substances or people, can make it especially difficult to have guests in your space. When people enter your home, you likely have less control over the environment than you would like to, and you might find yourself ruminating over whether your guests could be bringing in unwanted viruses, bacteria, or other feared contaminants. This can lead to compulsions that attempt to prevent contamination, like excessive hand-washing or avoiding hugging others. It can also lead to compulsive micro-managing of your home, which might look like asking guests to abide by OCD’s rules or carry out rituals for you.
Perfectionism, or “just right” OCD, can make you worry that your home isn’t “good” or “presentable” enough for visitors, or that guests could change your space in ways that make it feel “wrong” to you. Since we’re usually accustomed to existing in a certain way in our own space, OCD can also create the concern that you won’t be able to engage in compulsions when you feel like you need to.
And if you have relationship OCD (ROCD), which can lead to doubts and fears about romantic, platonic, and familial relationships, being surrounded by people that you hope to please can create additional pressure that kicks obsessions into overdrive. You might find yourself second-guessing your interactions, overanalyzing people’s tones or facial expressions, or worrying that others could secretly be disappointed or upset with you.
Because hosting usually involves cleaning before and after gatherings, OCD can also blur the line between reasonable tidying and compulsive, fear-driven rituals.
2. Traveling
If you’re not hosting holiday festivities, you may be traveling to visit someone else instead—which can come with its own set of OCD triggers.
Contamination OCD fears can be triggered by traveling, especially during cold and flu season and on crowded planes, trains, and buses. Many people with OCD also experience aerophobia, a fear of flying, or a fear of driving related to OCD (What if I hit someone and don’t know it? What if I snap and turn the car into oncoming traffic?). Both of these fears can make traveling more stressful and logistically complicated.
Overall, the disrupted routines and lack of sleep that are often typical of holiday traveling can make OCD symptoms worse. Changes to your ordinary schedule can increase stress, and being tired can drain the mental energy you use to resist compulsions.
3. Cooking and eating holiday meals
Once all of your guests arrive, or you settle in at a holiday gathering you’re attending, you will often be expected to partake in a holiday meal. But cooking can be difficult for people with harm OCD who worry that they’ll snap and harm someone with a knife or unintentionally harm others by leaving the stove on accidentally.
If you’ve prepared a dish, contamination OCD might also convince you that it isn’t safe for others to eat your food because of potential germs or inadequate food safety. Harm OCD might make you worry that you’ve somehow accidentally poisoned your meal, making all your careful time in the kitchen feel wasted. You might also be afraid that other people’s dishes aren’t safe to eat, even if they look delicious and you’re quite hungry.
Moral OCD, which involves fears of being a bad person, can make an elaborate dinner spread feel like an affront to people around the world who don’t have enough to eat, or lead to fears that you didn’t show enough gratitude to those who prepared your food.
4. Being around loved ones
After the leftovers from your meal are Saran-wrapped and put away, the family togetherness of the holidays often continues, bringing its own stressors.
Prolonged time with others—even people you love dearly—can trigger ROCD, especially because large gatherings might involve managing many important relationships at once. Suddenly, OCD is telling you that you need to be certain your parents actually approve of your partner, that the gift you carefully picked out could have somehow been offensive, or that your own romantic relationship might not actually be as perfect as you thought, in comparison with the seemingly happy couples you see on social media. Or maybe, you find yourself staring at holiday cards of beaming families while the doubt creeps in: Do I love my kids this much? Am I as happy as this mother seems?
In response, you might try to replay your own or your family members’ behaviors for signs of approval or rejection, seek reassurance that everyone actually liked your gifts, or avoid your loved ones entirely because the intrusive thoughts feel too intense to be around them.
Being around family during the holidays can also be especially difficult for those with pedophilia OCD (POCD) and other sexual obsessions. Intrusive sexual thoughts about children and family members might lead you to isolate yourself from festivities you wish you could take part in. You might compulsively monitor your body and “test” yourself to make sure you’re not feeling physiological arousal (for example, by asking yourself, “Did I feel anything down there when my niece hugged me just now?”). You might avoid the very contact you’re craving with family members, like hugs, because you’re worried you might have a thought you don’t want to have, or feel something you don’t want to feel.
5. Gift giving
Many holiday celebrations involve gift-giving, which OCD can turn into a litmus test of your relationships and your worth.
OCD can bring up doubts about every interaction after you give a gift or get one of your own, leading you to overanalyze recipients’ facial expressions for disappointment, or worry that your own reactions didn’t seem grateful enough.
Receiving gifts can be exciting, but when moral OCD gets involved, it can also produce guilt about the fact that you have more than others in the world. This might lead you to ruminate about whether you’re a bad person, or attempt to ease the guilt by compulsively donating money—whether you can afford to or not.
Handling holiday stress with OCD
Even if OCD shows up during the holidays, it doesn’t have to run the show. One good thing about the holidays? They happen around the same time every year, so you have time to prepare and get care and support. If you know the holiday season exacerbates your OCD, or if you want to shore up your mental health toolkit just in case, there are strategies you can use to keep OCD in check.
The most important step you can take to manage OCD during the holiday season—and year-round—is to seek out evidence-based treatment. Exposure response prevention (ERP) therapy is the most evidence-based treatment for OCD, and it works by gradually exposing you to situations that trigger your obsessions, while teaching you to resist engaging in compulsive rituals.
Here are a few examples of what that process can involve:
- If you have contamination OCD that’s being triggered by concerns about hosting a large gathering, your therapist might recommend starting a few months in advance by having just one friend over for dinner.
- If you struggle with incest obsessions and want to be able to interact with your family as you used to (hugs and all), your therapist might recommend a gradual hierarchy of exposure to help you get there: looking at family photos, sitting next to family members, and shaking a family member’s hand, before finally hugging your family member.
- For concerns around gift-giving caused by ROCD, you might try giving a gift without seeking reassurance about whether the recipient liked it, or receiving a gift without over-analyzing your reaction.
- If you struggle with violent obsessions, your therapist might recommend that you practice using knives. This could look like starting with plastic knives, moving to butter knives, and, eventually, using butcher knives to cut the turkey.
It’s important to remember that response prevention is even more important than exposure. For example, hugging a family member (exposure) has to be paired with response prevention (not compulsively checking in on your feelings and bodily sensations, not ruminating, not engaging in mental review, etc.). Performing compulsions while doing the exposure can interfere with the learning that occurs through ERP: learning safety, learning that compulsions are not necessary, learning that anxiety will rise and fall on its own without compulsions (we have a parasympathetic nervous system for a reason), and—most importantly—that OCD is lying to you.
This approach can help you gradually face what triggers your obsessions and respond to them in healthier ways. You can learn to tolerate whatever arises (unwanted thoughts and images, anxiety, shame, guilt, not “right” feelings, etc.) and allow them to pass on their own without compulsive rituals. Over time, repeated exposure can reduce the intensity of obsessions and help you learn that OCD is lying to you. ERP can give you more freedom to make the choices that you want to make instead of OCD driving the car.
That said, by definition, compulsions feel necessary in the moment. It’s not as simple as just sitting with your anxiety or taking a moment to breathe. Strategies for response prevention need to be robust enough to counter the powerful hold our compulsions have on us. Because of this, learning effective response prevention skills entirely on your own can be extremely difficult. It’s safest and most effective to work with a therapist who has experience with OCD and training in ERP, because they’ll specifically work with you on learning the strategies you need to help you prevent compulsions.
Practicing radical acceptance throughout the season can also help with this. The holiday doesn’t need to be free from intrusive thoughts or anxiety to be meaningful. Often, we go into holidays trying not to experience scary thoughts and uncomfortable emotions, but that effort usually backfires. Suppressing, bracing ourselves, and trying not to think certain thoughts or feel certain feelings often creates more of the very thoughts and feelings we are trying to get rid of. It’s counterintuitive, but acceptance and allowance of the presence of thoughts, feelings, and sensations leads to them moving through more quickly. Therapists trained in ERP often teach radical acceptance as part of response prevention, helping you build the confidence and tolerance needed to practice it.
Letting go of perfection is another powerful practice. Making room for an imperfect holiday experience can create more peace and less resistance—a skill ERP can help you build by reducing the urge to meet OCD’s rigid standards.
If you find yourself facing OCD symptoms when you want to be celebrating, it’s understandable to feel frustrated. The holidays can be stressful for many of us, and you didn’t choose to have OCD add to that stress. Your festivities may not look like the movies tell us they should—but that doesn’t mean they can’t be joyful. And guess what? They often don’t look like Hallmark movies for people without OCD, either.
If you’re struggling with OCD during the holidays or any time of year, reaching out for help from an OCD specialist can make a real difference. At NOCD, all of our licensed therapists specialize in ERP therapy and deeply understand all symptoms and themes of OCD. To learn more about getting started with evidence-based treatment for OCD, schedule a 15-minute call with our team. You don’t have to face holiday stress—or OCD—alone.
